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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27027451">Like the Waves</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/shisabella/pseuds/shisabella'>shisabella</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:06:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,253</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27027451</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/shisabella/pseuds/shisabella</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Misty visits Ash in Alola. Ash has something to tell her.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kasumi | Misty/Satoshi | Ash Ketchum</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Like the Waves</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I'm moving my old works from fanfiction.net and tumblr to this account. This story was originally written in 2017.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The wind blowing over Alola carries the stingy scent of the sea everywhere even when the sea is not in sight. Ash likes it, of course—it brings to mind memories of fun times, of saltwater drops clinging to his hair and to Pikachu’s fur and of melted ice cream dripping down his arm, of jumping feet first between the waves and raising splashes as high as the sun. It’s a summery scent, a feel-good scent, and he likes noticing it when he leans out of his window in the morning and the breeze blows against his face.</p>
<p>And yet sometimes—only sometimes—with it comes a faraway echo, a thought bubbling up from the back of his mind. Somehow always unexpected, always stopping him in his tracks for the briefest of moments. Not unpleasant, but always accompanied by a strange almost-ache he’s never quite managed (never tried?) to give a name to. Something like</p>
<p>
  <em>I bet she’d like this place</em>
</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>
  <em>I wish you were here</em>
</p>
<p>but it’s not just the <em>missing</em>—that he’s accustomed to. He’s quite the expert: he misses Brock and Dawn and May and all of his friends, and he misses his mom and his home sometimes when he’s away and then all the places he’s been to and all the new friends he’s made every time he goes back. He misses places he’s yet to see, too, it feels like, the wanderlust itching at his fingertips whenever he rolls over in his bed and can’t fall asleep. Yep, he knows all there is to know about missing! But this is different somehow. Like there’s something more to it he can’t place, like it’s a special kind of missing, crashing over him at once and pulling him under. <em>blub blub</em></p>
<p>Only for a moment, then something else catches his attention and the feeling’s gone again. Like the waves.</p>
<p>Yet he keeps her special lure in his backpack even if he hasn’t used it since that time Buizel stole it. Yet sometimes he pauses while he’s rummaging through his stuff for something and finds it in his palm, and just kinda looks at it until Pikachu looks too and exclaims “Pikachu-pi” and he smiles and says “you miss her too, huh?” before letting it fall back with the rest. Yet sometimes—but only sometimes—he wakes up at night and in the few foggy moments where his brain still fells halfway caught in the dream he expects that he’ll roll over and see her pink sleeping bag by his side.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s just the sea’s ever-present reminder. It makes sense that she’d feel so intrinsically related to it in his mind, after all—what with being a Water Pokémon Trainer and everything.</p>
<p>(a wave:<em> bet you and Lana would get along</em>)</p>
<p>Or maybe—but he’s not going to admit that, not even to Pikachu, not even to himself, not even in those moments of half-dream in the quietest quiet of the night—it’s to do with that other thing. The way Serena pressed her lips to his as they parted, turning his entire perspective upside down and steering his thoughts bluntly towards directions he’d never consciously wandered to: if it had never occurred to him that she</p>
<p>(or anyone)</p>
<p>might feel that way until it slapped him in the face, did he ever fail to consider anything else? Anyone else’s feelings?</p>
<p>(Maybe his own?)</p>
<p>But he’s not thinking about that. Nuh-huh. Nope. It’s almost morning and the wind is blowing through the open window already, the sky on the other side the gray-pink of early dawn, and he’s decidedly starving, so he pushes his blanket aside and bounces stretching to his feet. There’s a new exciting day just waiting to begin.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>***</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s not like they haven’t heard from each other at all for years. There’s been the occasional phonecall, the occasional postcard and email, catching up with each other and making promises to call each other again soon. But it’s not the same. Not the same as her fingers casually closing around his wrist to drag him towards something exciting she spotted, not the same as her elbow bumping into him her hand on his shoulder as she asks if he’s okay the sunset on the sea reflected in her eyes—</p>
<p>“Ash, what are you doing? We’re gonna be late!”</p>
<p>He nods and turns, adjusting his hat on his head. The wave’s gone.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>***</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The moment he sees her again in person he knows two things. The first is that it’s like time stood still, and everything from how she tilts her head slightly to smile to the way that smile lights up her whole face and wrinkles her nose just a little still feels as familiar as it did years ago. The same way walking into his room again after a journey feels familiar, everything still the way he left it, still comforting and known.</p>
<p>The second thing is his insides are suddenly all tangled up together and he can’t get a single word out.</p>
<p>Before he can stare for longer—and probably look like some kind of idiot—Pikachu flings himself from his shoulder into her arms. “Pikachu-pi!”</p>
<p>“Hey, Pika-pal!” she greets him, and it’s so strange to hear her voice without static or distortion, without miles and miles in between. “It’s so good to see you!”</p>
<p>And then she looks back to him as Pikachu climbs to her shoulder, and smiles again, and does something she’s never done before: she closes in a couple steps the remaining distance between them and hugs him too. Only briefly, only pressing her body to his for a moment, but in that moment Ash’s certain his heart has done a backflip or five and all at once the seafloor’s gone from under his feet and the water’s rushing to close over his head.</p>
<p>blub blub</p>
<p>When she lets go maybe for a second he catches a slight glimmer of tears in her eyes. But she grins it away and says, “So are you at least going to say hi or not?”</p>
<p>“Oh.” Right. His fingers run embarrassedly to the back of his head. “Y-yeah. Hi, Mist. It's—”</p>
<p>(In a flash he thinks of the years passed since they last stood this close. Of all the places he’s seen and thought <em>bet you’d like this </em>about, all the phonecalls stretched over different time zones, early morning sunlight shining behind her shoulders while his eyes were sleep-heavy already. Of—somehow—coming home.)</p>
<p>“…it’s good to see you again.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>***</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s not a thought he concretizes all at once, it’s a million thought fragments fitting together one by one over the course of his short stay in Kanto until the full picture is laid out in front of his eyes and all he can do is look at it and go “oh”.</p>
<p>It’s her fingers eagerly closing around his wrist as she says <em>come on, you need to tell me everything.</em> It’s the way her smile in person is so much brighter than it transpired through a videophone screen, a light beaming, so hard to take his eyes off from. It’s the smirk and the spark in her glance before she sweeps him off his feet during their battle—literally, by way of Pikachu being flung out of the battlefield by her Mega Gyarados’ hydro pump and crashing straight into him. It’s how later they’re sitting on the couch and chatting and she moves closer to make space for Brock coming with three hot chocolate mugs and her shoulder bumps against his and stays there, doesn’t go away, and all the while his heart beats fast fast fast: <em>oh.</em></p>
<p>
  <em>Oh.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I think I—</em>
</p>
<p>And it’s how their laughters still fit together perfectly even after so long, how everything from her teasing him and saying <em>don’t get a big head now, Mr. Pokémon Master</em> when he tells her all about Greninja and the Kalos League he nearly won to turning his head and seeing her sitting with Pikachu in her lap just feels <em>right</em> in a way he couldn’t put into words if he wanted to try. It’s how later still Brock walks in on them again, but this time he chuckles and asks <em>did I interrupt something?</em> and for a second or two Misty’s cheeks go red.</p>
<p>And it was so easy to ignore all of it when they were both younger and had never had a reason to let his thoughts venture in that direction. Easier still to ignore it while she was far away. But people are so much <em>bigger</em> in person, he realizes now: they take up space around and inside you in ways you forget when you only see them through a screen or try to imagine their voice from the handful of words scribbled on the back of a postcard.</p>
<p>
  <em>I think I…</em>
</p>
<p>They’re alone one last time before he leaves again—Brock said there was something he needed to check really quick (later, on his flight back to Alola, Ash will suddenly wonder if he did it on purpose), and almost to the very last moment he’s sure that he won’t tell her anything, that he’ll say goodbye and go back and let the waves pass once more. But then she laughs, with a hint of sadness deep down but beaming still, and the sunset makes her hair look like it’s on fire, and Ash’s heart does a stuttery somersault again, and—</p>
<p>well, dang it.</p>
<p>He swallows. Almost on their own accord his fingers reach for the brim of his hat: turn it around.</p>
<p>She quirks one eyebrow.</p>
<p>He takes a deep, deep breath—as deep as his lungs will allow. “Listen,” he begins, and her eyebrow arches a little further. “I have to tell you something, and it has to be right now because then I’ll be back in Alola and I might forget again, and who knows when we’ll see each other again then.”</p>
<p>“Okay, so say it,” she tells him with a slight confused shrug. Ash swallows again. Pikachu is quiet at his side.</p>
<p>“Y-yeah.” Another deep breath. Deep, deep, until it reaches the end of his chest and lingering there for a moment. “I’m going to say it. Right now. It's—I— oh! Wait!”</p>
<p>He reaches for the backpack at his feet. Rummages though it a bit and when he can’t find it for a moment his heart jumps into his throat—but no, it’s still there, falling right into his palm as he pushes aside a spare pair of underwear. He rights himself and opens his fingers to show her.</p>
<p>“…you still have that?” She sounds moved. Ash nods, rubbing his other hand to the nape of his neck.</p>
<p>“Yeah. Well, back in Sinnoh a Buizel once stole it but then I got it back and so now I don’t use it anymore, but I kept it.”</p>
<p>She takes her eyes from the lure to his face. Her eyebrow rises a little again. “So is this what you wanted to tell me?”</p>
<p>“Yeah. No! I mean—” He thought it’d be easier. Heat crawls up the sides of his face. “I kept it. Because it was a gift from you, you know? And—I’ve been thinking, y'know, lately, about—stuff—”</p>
<p>“Stuff.”</p>
<p>“Yeah! Things. The way I feel about things. And—you—”</p>
<p>…wait, is she laughing at him? Is that a smirk trying to curl the corner of her mouth? Well, doesn’t matter, he has to get this <em>somewhere </em>now. “—the way I—aaah. You know, see, I never really though about it back when we were traveling together, I mean, this whole kind of thing, I just thought it was weird, but—”</p>
<p>Her teeth sink into her lip. She’s definitely holding back, a laugh or a grin or something, and Ash’s face burns, both in embarrassment and mortification.</p>
<p>“…but—now I did, and—”</p>
<p>Words fail him entirely. For a moment or two he’s just left opening and closing his mouth helplessly, saltwater clogging his throat. He lets his breath out in a frustrated sigh then, and lowers his head, because well, even he can tell this is nothing but a mess, and now she’s going to think—</p>
<p>A hand finds his face. Turns it.</p>
<p>She doesn’t taste like the sea. She tastes like they ice cream they were just eating, and a bit like chapstick; and their noses bump and their teeth the same, and he can feel her face burning too. But it feels exactly like being knocked off his feet, sent plummeting to depths of blue. <em>blub blub</em> indeed.</p>
<p>Afterwards she kinda snickers-laughs against his mouth, her face hot still, like she caught herself by surprise too. Ash blinks. Blinks again.</p>
<p>“…Oh,” is all that comes out of him.</p>
<p>“So did I—” she stutters just a bit, winded like after running, still sounding somewhat like incredulous laughter. “Did I guess right?”</p>
<p>“Y-yeah,” he manages. And: “It was—real nice.”</p>
<p>Her forehead rests against his. “It was.”</p>
<p>“…We could… do it again? Maybe?”</p>
<p>A pause, brief. “You want to kiss me again?”</p>
<p>“…Yeah?”</p>
<p>She draws back a little. Enough so he can see the spark in her eyes, the same he saw from across the battlefield. “Well then, Mr. Pokémon Master,” she says, and pulls her lips into a grin: “I challenge you to a rematch.”</p>
<p>Ash’s insides are all twisted like wet rags, his face afire still. For a moment he can only stare.</p>
<p>He takes a deep breath then, and dives in.</p>
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